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Newly discovered comet Nishimura could be visible to naked eye this weekend
- dreamcompiler 3y agoSounds cool. Still not getting up at 4 am to see it.
- maxbond 3y agoMe neither but imho it's always worth giving these things a shot for ten minutes, at whatever time it's convenient. You're often able to get a modest glimpse at a suboptimal time, which I'm pretty happy with. Often you'll see something other than what you're looking for. And worst comes to worst you took some time to look at the sky. Last weekend I was looking in the sky for a bit, and I caught two satellites, a shooting star - and an absolutely amazing view of the new Starlink constellation, one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Other nights I've come up totally empty. But when you spend ten minutes here or there, over the years you're bound to see some really cool stuff. ETA: unfortunately though, I just went out to look, and I couldn't find Venus. I looked it up and it doesn't rise until the early morning. Darn!
- dylan604 3y ago>at whatever time it's convenient I'm sorry, but that's not how astronomy works. Things are visible for precise times. You see it when it's available, or you can see it from other people's imagery. That's why people plan for events months to years in advance. Like the October 14th partial eclipse or the 2024 total eclipse. It's not something you do when convenient. Honestly, I think that's the first time I've ever heard that phrased use in this context.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- maxbond 3y agoI don't really understand why my comment has ellicted such a strong reaction, but I'm sorry for bothering you. I think we're engaging in different, parallel hobbies. The circumstances of my life don't permit me to plan something like that, years in advance and a thousand miles away. I basically take what I can get, and am pleased to have seen more amazing things than I could have bargained for. When I had an opportunity to see an eclipse in my area - I made the best of it. Happy stargazing.
- dylan604 3y agoStrong reaction? I just pointed out facts. You’re replying to a thread about a comet that can be viewed with the naked eye. They don’t happen often, and this one in particular has a very specific viewing window. Suggesting to some one they can view it at any time they find convenient is not helpful in the slightest
- maxbond 3y agoAlrighty. Thank you for the feedback. Feel free to exercise your right to downvote or flag the comment as you see fit.
- dreamcompiler 3y agoVenus is always visible either right after sunset (convenient) or right before sunrise (less convenient). [Unless it's transiting in front of or behind the Sun.] Venus is never visible at midnight. This has been your Venus PSA.
- quickthrower2 3y agoYes I was spoiled by Hale-Bopp so wont settle for anything that requires planning, comet wise :-)
- dylan604 3y agoWell, I guess after your first Hello, World! program, there's no need to program anything ever again, right?
- knowaveragejoe 3y agoRough night?
- Cyphase 3y agoMaybe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37442228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37442228
- dylan604 3y agoLOL. I could see how you could read it as such. I just think it's really sad that people think that they've seen all that can ever be seen because of one thing. Yes, Hale-Bopp was an impressive sight to behold. Will comet Nishimura come close, absolutely not. However, that doesn't mean that it won't hold it's own unique experience for different reasons. I guess rather than feeling sad, I should be accepting that the one experience is all that person will ever need and be fulfilled for the rest of their days???
- quickthrower2 3y agoAfter my first Hello, World I don’t need to program Hello, World again
- dylan604 3y agoAfter months of clear blue skies and well over 100 degree temps, it just started raining with forecast predicting a week of cloudy potential rain with a much need serious break in temps. On the weekend of a comet!! I swear the universe just doesn’t want me to see anything! Argh!!!
- psunavy03 3y agohttps://theoatmeal.com/comics/celestial_events https://theoatmeal.com/comics/celestial_events
- dylan604 3y agoYeah. There’s many a version of this, but I don’t need a comic, it’s the story of every stargazer When I have the time off, the weather is shite. When I’m busy, the weather is clear. When a new moon lands on a weekend and I rent gear to take advantage,you guessed it…
- squeaky-clean 3y agoThere's a common in-joke among telescope owners that purchasing a new telescope gets you a month of free "cloud service".
- dotancohen 3y agoEvery year my family goes to watch the Perseids in the desert, a drive of a few hours. This year, not one but two other families joined us... and this was the first year ever that we had clouds in our remote viewing spot. It was so cloudy that after ten o'clock we saw not a single meteor, and most of us stayed up until three to catch whatever we could, despite having work the next day.
- hef19898 3y agoDoesn't that happen everytime you want to show something?
- ceroxylon 3y agoIt doesn't help my existential dread when the phrasing is "the thing thing we didn't know existed a few weeks ago that would cause gnarly problems if it was closer is close enough to see with the naked eye soon!", but I will indeed be on top of a hill looking out for it.
- dylan604 3y agoDon't look up
- BossingAround 3y agoThat was both a funny and deeply depresing movie. Would recommend. Hope that it's not gonna transform into a prophecy/documentary at some point.
- hef19898 3y agoI guess it will, as does Idiocracy I am afraid. Or not. But yes, don't look up was funny!
- developer93 3y agoIdiocracy is based on a false premise
- ctoth 3y agoI'd love to learn more about this. I thought it was based on The Marching Morons by Kornbluth and the subsequent discussion between Niven and Asimov I read many years ago. It seemed true then. It seems more true today.
- developer93 3y agoOK, fiction writers aren't (often) scientists so while such discussions might be interesting you should not take them as authoritative & evidence based. It's a slightly eugenic fallacy which assumes that a) poor people are poor because they're stupid and feckless, and no other reason like the inbuilt injustices on our society (it's considerably easier to stay rich than to get rich) and b) education, upbringing and innate intelligence are the same thing. Life situation isn't genetics.
- divbzero 3y agoI recall Hale–Bopp being incredibly clear in the sky night after night after night. What are the chances that we will see another comet of that magnitude in our lifetimes?
- pault 3y agoNot only that, you could see it in the middle of the day. After witnessing that I understood why ancient people considered them an act of god.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- finite_depth 3y agoDecent. Great Comets are about a once-a-generation event, give or take. A list of brighter comets of the last ~century listed by peak magnitude (lower is brighter, the limit of a typical dark sky is about +6, Hale-Bopp peaked at -1.8, the brightest star in the sky is -1.68) * The Daylight Comet of 1910, reached a magnitude of -5 * Comet Ikeya-Seki, 1965, reached a magnitude of -10 (close to the full moon!) during the day as it grazed the Sun * Comet West, 1976, reached a magnitude of -3 * Comet McNaught, 2008, reached -5 * Comet Lovejoy, 2011, reached -4 (but was too close to the Sun in the sky to be easily observed by humans) So that's five comets of greater brightness than Hale-Bopp in ~100 years, or about one every 20 years. Hale-Bopp actually wasn't notable for its brightness, but for its size.
- rtpg 3y agoIs there a website with more info about where and when I should look?
- maxbond 3y agohttps://theskylive.com/c2023p1-info https://theskylive.com/c2023p1-info If you plug in your location you can see when it rises and sets, and the "online planetarium" can help you to orient yourself.
- RigelKentaurus 3y agoThanks for the link. I'm typing this at 11:43pm in Cupertino, CA. I plugged in Cupertino as my location, and it says Rise is 5:02, which I assume means 5:02 am, which makes sense. However, it also says VISIBILITY RIGHT NOW C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) is above the horizon from California, United States edit_location_alt. Right now it is placed in the East-North-East direction at an altitude of 23° above the horizon. How can it be visible and above the horizon right now if the rise time is 5:02am?
- maxbond 3y agoHonestly I don't know. My guess would be some kind of bug resulting from integrating different, conflicting data sources? But I'm mostly responding so that someone who knows better sees their bat sign and doesn't wait to see if I respond.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mannykannot 3y agoIn general, you can only expect the interval between the rising and setting of a celestial object to be similar to that for the sun on that day if the object is near the ecliptic. Perhaps the most obvious counter-example is the pole star, which, being closely aligned with Earth's axis, never sets on Cupertino. According to the same site, however, the comet is currently in Leo, which is close to the ecliptic and is currently setting before the sun, so I cannot see this being the explanation here.
- BossingAround 3y agoThis is off topic, but can I just say, the universe, and its vastness, is absolutely incomprehensible and awe inspiring. For example, the distance of earth to moon is ~380 000 kilometres (or ~238 000 miles), depending of course on the current phase of the moon's orbit. This is just about enough to stack all planets in our solar system and put them side by side between Earth and moon. The combined diameter of all planets in our solar system is ~384 000 kilometers [1]. For fun, the longest flight on earth seems to be Singapore to JFK, which covers ~15k km (or 9.5k miles), which takes us 19 hours. Just in case you want a toy scale to realize how far the big bright object you can commonly see in the sky is. And what's crazy is when you realize that our whole galaxy is just a spec of dust in the scale of the universe. [1] https://futurism.com/you-can-fit-all-of-the-planets-between-earth-and-the-moon https://futurism.com/you-can-fit-all-of-the-planets-between-...
- sva_ 3y agoIn the article it says best chances to see it are this weekend (implying today and tomorrow), then says it'll be closest on Sep 17th, which is the following weekend. Which one is it?
- janzer 3y agoFrom the article: Nishimura, which has the scientific name C/2023 P1, will pass closest to the sun on 17 September. Closest to the sun, not earth. Also, while not an area I have much knowledge in, I believe it gets rather harder to view as the angle between it and the sun narrows.
- Vindl 3y agoOn September 17th it will rise above the horizon shortly after the Sun, making it impossible to see due to sunlight.
- thom 3y agoBought some image stabilising binoculars recently, admittedly on a bit of a whim but the experience is quite magical. Excited to see if they're any good for stargazing!
- exhilaration 3y agoCan you share the model?
- thom 3y agoMine are the Canon 10x42. More money than you should really be spending on something nonessential but I swear the effect is mind expanding. Probably cheaper to get a good tripod though.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoThis is what I love about HN!!! Maybe I've been living under a rock but until this thread I hadn't even heard of this comet. But it's 4:50AM, I live on a house on top of a hill with excellent visibility to the East and I have binoculars. Just need to stay awake long enough wait for it to rise above the trees and hopefully the light pollution 10 miles away won't be an issue!
- gwill 3y agodid you have any luck? i found that it was too faint for my 72mm telescope.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoNo, by the time it was high enough, there was too much light from the interstate and probably early morning twilight. I'll try again in a few days when it's darker outside and the comet is supposed to be brighter then. I'm up at 6AM weekdays anyway.
- joshuahedlund 3y agoWhithout expected magnitude, Useless to know whether I can see it bright like Venus in the city or if maybe I might be able to make out a smudge with binoculars if I drive an hour out of town… Found details on spaceweather.com: > There is a bright comet in the morning sky. You probably can't see it with the naked eye, but even short exposures with digital cameras are picking up the starlike head and long tail of Comet Nishimura (C/2023 P1) > Comet Nishimura is plunging toward the sun for a close encounter inside the orbit of Mercury on Sept. 17th. Increasing heat is causing it to brighten rapidly. Latest estimates of the comet's brightness place it at magnitude +4.5. In a dark sky, this would be visible to the unaided eye, but the morning sky is not dark. Cameras are required to observe the comet; a few seconds of exposure time are enough for a very nice picture.
- Vindl 3y agoIt looks like the magnitude on Sunday morning will be around +4.90, so it'll be hard to see with the naked eye unless you can observe from a good dark-sky site. It will brighten in the following days as it gets closer to the Sun, but we won't be able to appreciate it since it will stay below the horizon until sunrise.
- troymc 3y agoAccording to the Minor Planet Center, 25 comets have been discovered this year (for a total of 4589 known comets, some of which are "lost"). https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/ https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/
- troymc 3y agoBonus: a table of the brightest currently (and recently) observable comets: https://heavens-above.com/Comets.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT https://heavens-above.com/Comets.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspec...
- Jiro 3y agoIf you miss it you can wait for this one next year: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/anticipating-comet-tsuchinshan-atlas-c-2023-a3/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/anticipating-come...
- dheera 3y ago> offering stargazers a once-in-a-437-year chance Why are comets all of a sudden coming by every year or two? 15 years ago I felt like seeing a comet was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity but nowadays it seems visible comets show up all the time.
- lIl-IIIl 3y agoProbably because of this website and whatever algorithm is choosing news stories for you knows that you're interested. This comet probably won't make the news in the New York Times, for example.
- dheera 3y agoUmmm https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/science/comet-nishimura.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/science/comet-nishimura.h...
- pengaru 3y agoNeat! Maybe I'll be able to get another comet photo like when NEOWISE was visible: https://pengaru.com/~vc/tmp/neowise.jpg https://pengaru.com/~vc/tmp/neowise.jpg